Part 2
Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?
This prioritisation of timbre (the “overall sound” as Paul describes it) is a key prerogative when I’m writing. I am far more interested in telling stories through timbre than chords or lyrics. There’s so much more I can do there.
Whilst harmony (“chords” as Paul describes) is important to me, I would rather let harmony bloom from an interesting timbre than attempt to construct harmonies using music theory. This is also usually how I manage to find some quite interesting harmonies, by accident, that I wouldn’t have arrived at using traditional means. The glissandos which wriggle in and out of the second section of “Planet Market” are a good example of this.
There was a really good point in the book On Sonic Art by Trevor Wishart which helped articulate my feelings towards timbre. Wishart draws an analogy, comparing the musical score to the written word, and music itself to speech and the act of speaking. He talks about how text alone can’t convey emotions like sarcasm, and that trying to read an account of a conversation between two people in bed together at 3AM would make the text appear as nonsensical, but the interaction between those two people is meaningful in real-time. People mean, that’s where the intention is wrapped up.
And it’s the same with music. Like, you could have a really happy major chord from the perspective of theory, which, as a result of the timbre, overall atmosphere and way it’s played, can sound really sad. Vice versa too - did you know Pharrell’s hit ‘Happy’ was written in F Minor?!
Anyway I’m not getting into music theory stuff … as said I just collide sounds together and hope for the best. And if they sound good timbre-wise, then I’m happy. I tend to be drawn to light sounding stuff, and super fast dynamic sound shapes. Hi-tech, sci-fi, anything which helps evoke the imagined landscapes I want to build climb inside.
My personal sound is built from these elements and a focus on immersive timbre.
Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?
I once had a really nice experience on the tram in Croydon where I found myself totally hypnotised by the sound of the engine, which developed into a really gentle evolving drone composition, comprised of the engine and irregular flickers of soft conversation.
I have a lot of time for the Varèsian definition that music is “organised sound”. For me it means you, as a listener, can “organise” the sounds you encounter in momentary life into internal compositions. These are built out of a sort of meaning you apply in whatever way you like to the individual elements encountered in each moment of an overall soundscape.
In this way, when I pay attention properly to what’s going on around me at any given moment, any sonic experience can be comprehended as musical, like the Croydon tram scenario.
From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?
I can tolerate a wide range of musical extremes.
There are times when I love extreme complexity, both in making and listening, and there are times when I love extreme simplicity and repetition. It depends on my mood, but yeah I’m thankful for this wide tolerance as it allows me to enjoy a really wide range of different types of music.
If I had to pick one, I suppose extreme immersion?! Like super texturally rich stuff - it elicits the painting of a really vivid picture in my mind’s eye. This is the stuff which makes me feel drawn towards certain pieces / artists.
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?
Let’s talk about “Planet Market” from the EP.
As said, I really describe my process as one of abstraction and collision. The basis of the piece was made out of an iPhone recording I got of a drunken conversation at a mate’s BBQ last year. When I start a piece of music, I tend to just go insane with processing the sounds I’ve gathered - no different with “Planet Market”!
I basically just threw plugins at these recorded conversations until I’d created this warped, pitching soundscape, which I then re-arranged into a ‘texture sequence’ which I pretty much always do when I start. There’s no real methodology here - I’ll just throw stuff around until I have a 4 or 8bar sequence I’m happy with. I see this as the landscape for my music to exist inside; once I’ve done this I can progress with arrangement.
Things tend continue to be instinctual after this, and that was certainly the case with “Planet Market.” I built the whole first 2 minutes in about 24 hours! I always see this as the hallmark of a good track - there’s a sense of natural flow there where everything just ‘fits’. If it takes me ages fiddling around to create an arrangement which works, usually this is a sign of me forcing the music too much.
In a past life I’d tend to power through and force myself to finish these ideas, but as I’ve grown in confidence as a producer I’ve got more used to discarding these ideas and accepting my gut instinct - i.e., it’s not working, so why force it?
The real focus with this track (and the EP as a whole) was marrying chaotic serendipity and ‘noise’ - facets I love in music - with a sense of focus, to ensure that each piece feels like a flowing, consistent organism as opposed to a series of stark musical actions. To do this, I focus on creating ‘cohesive’ arrangements: where the essence of the track can be discerned from 4-5 separate elements, but no more. I see this as the core ‘structure’, which I then embellish with ‘decorations’ to support.
I visualise these cohesive arrangements as a series of hard lines comprising of patterns / shapes going from left to right, with these nebulous clouds of decorations below and above these sequence lines. And trust me when I say these decoration clouds are nebulous! It’s not uncommon for me to use about 100+ channels when making a track - timbre, immersion, and playing with organics is such an important thing for me, and so as much subtle variation as possible by utilising decorative layers to augment and mutate the core elements is really important to me.
After I built the first 2 minutes or so of “Planet Market,” I left the project for 2 months and didn’t listen to it at all, so I could assess it as objectively as possible and with refreshed ears. This was a trend which was key to make the cohesive arrangements I mentioned for Familiar Rift - the more I listen on loop, the more I become de-sensitised to the original ideas in the track which were so exciting to me, and so keep adding layers and layers to keep things exciting, which in turn obfuscates the whole ‘cohesive arrangement’ thing for me - the core elements just get totally buried!
When I sat down and opened up the project again, I listened to it loads of times on loop whilst I re-familiarised myself with the project. This always takes a long time because of how many decorative layers are on top - usually a couple of hours really. Once this is done then I start flowing really quickly, and tend to get in a hyper-focused state. This was absolutely the case with “Planet Market,” and the core arrangement was done in no time. After this I again left the track for ages, didn’t listen to it at all until I came to the mixing stage.
I used to treat mixing as a non-separate process, but now I do, which actually I really like - the compartmentalisation of the different stages of making music allow me to focus way more on specific facets, rather than sort of dealing with everything at once in a chaotic way.
The great thing about treating the mixdown as separate is that at that point, I can’t touch the arrangement - I accept it as done. There might be some arrangement / structure edits at this stage, but it’s all informed by the mix down as opposed to how the piece functions musically. in this way, I do way less fiddling and actually get way more stuff done.
Overall, there’s a few key things I can extract from the making of “Planet Market” which apply to the Familiar Rift EP, and my creative process as a whole. The first is is that the first stage is always just a chaotic splurge of throwing things at the wall, abstraction through heavy-duty processing and raw experimentation.
The second is then trying to create cohesive arrangements from this material, where the key musical identity of a piece can be summed up as minimally and succinctly as possible, with heavy use of decorative augmentation.
The third is the separation of processes - accepting when an arrangement is done, so that in my mind I can give myself some closure and more effectively manage my output.
